July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Mike Quigley will retire as chief
executive officer of NBN Co., which is building an Australian
government-backed broadband network, amid political debate on
how the project will be completed.

Quigley, who has been in the role for four years, will
continue in the position until a successor is found, the
government-owned company said in a statement on its website.

Australia’s opposition is proposing to scale back the A$44
billion ($40 billion) project to connect all Australians to
faster Internet services if it wins an election due later this
year. Quigley, a former executive with Alcatel-Lucent, came out
of retirement to be the first employee of NBN, which is using
fiber, wireless and satellite to meet its goal.

“Mr. Quigley can be tremendously proud of what he has
achieved,” Australia’s Communications Minister Anthony Albanese
and Finance Minister Penny Wong said in a joint e-mailed
statement.

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has
labeled the program, which only had about 70,000 customers as of
June 30, a “failing project.”

Users are from among the 484,800 homes and businesses NBN
had reached with the network as of the end of June, compared
with a target of 1.2 million in the company’s 2011 corporate
plan.

Melbourne-based Telstra Corp., Australia’s biggest phone
company, is getting A$11 billion of compensation from the
government after agreeing to give up control of its copper
network to make way for the NBN.